Pronunciation of 常识 (常識)

[tooironic]

Is 常识 (常識) pronounced chángshí or chángshì?

I've always pronounced it as chángshí, but the other day one of my Chinese friends didn't understand what I was talking about until I changed it to chángshì out of a sheer guess.

Could it be a mainland China / Taiwan difference?

[esoyohoo]

accent is different not only between mainland and Taiwan, but also in mainland's different regions or even cities.

Taiwan ： chang2 shi4 http://words.sinica.edu.tw/sou/sou.html

Mainland： cháng 2 shí2 http://xh.5156edu.com/html5/172974.html

[Glenn]

Seems to be a TW/ML difference:

常識 注音一式　ㄔㄤˊ　ㄕˋ

http://dict.revised....&op=f&imgFont=1

[Edit] I suppose it could also be 24 some places on the mainland, but that seems to be the Taiwanese standard.

[stoney]

Were is your friend from? How did you use the word; in what contextf? I'm surprised he wouldn't have figured it out if it was used in a typical fasion.

I just came across it the other day in a Shanghai TV show. They used two second tones.

[creamyhorror]

Seems to be a TW/ML difference:

常識 注音一式　ㄔㄤˊ　ㄕˋ

http://dict.revised....&op=f&imgFont=1

This is interesting. In Singapore we pronounce 认识 as ren4 shi4. (I only discovered 识 was actually shi2 a few years ago, after getting exposed to some Mainland speech.) How is 认识 pronounced in TW? Ren4 shi4 or Ren4 shi5? If it's the former, maybe we took after the Taiwanese (just as we don't use neutral tones either).

[Glenn]

It's apparently the latter (officially, anyway):

認識

注音一式　ㄖㄣˋ　˙ㄕ

http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/cgi-bin/newDict/dict.sh?cond=%BB%7B%C3%D1&pieceLen=50&fld=1&cat=&ukey=1377993281&serial=1&recNo=1&op=f&imgFont=1

[anonymoose]

Off topic, but often 常识 is translated as "common sense". However, it seems to me to be closer to "common knowledge". Has anyone else though this?

[tooironic]

Yes, that's a good point @anonymoose. I have also noticed that. Although, IMO, I think it's more like in English we have the two concepts of "common sense" and "common knowledge", which are a little different, but in Chinese they just happened to be merged into one word.

[Hofmann]

As a side note, 識式拭������軾飾������鉽烒������ are homophones in Middle Chinese, and you'll notice that most of these are pronounced shì in Mandarin.

Comment: Well that's an improvement. Instead of truncating my post it just displays a bunch of question-marked rhombi.

[Glenn]

Out of curiosity (I really want to know what they are now), can you give the 旁s of the three that didn't display properly? I'm assuming they're all 式 on the right. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

[imron]

This is interesting. In Singapore we pronounce 认识 as ren4 shi4.

On the mainland, this is fourth tone, neutral tone.

[Hofmann]

U+22091, U+25FEE, U+27139. Not quite; 2/3.

[Glenn]

Nice. Thanks.

[creamyhorror]

Thanks Glenn & imron. I know it's ren4 shi5 on the mainland, but wasn't sure about its pronunciation in TW.

Another example of our disuse of the neutral tone is pronouncing 椅子 as 'yi2 zi3'. How do Taiwanese say it informally?

[Glenn]

The dictionary says it's 35. I'm just going to assume that's how most people say it.